With justified maternal pride the mother could gaze on her fair-haired and only little daughter, who became again here the centre of all love and care. On the journey between Mayence and Neuwied the child had repeatedly asked, “Is that mamma’s Rhine?” But the little Princess Marie had, notwithstanding her tender age, an irresistible longing for the country in which she had first seen the light. She was constantly craving to be back again in her distant home, and became nearly ill from home sickness. During the whole journey she kept repeating—“Home, home, let us go home!” When the Roumanian students came to meet them at the station at Vienna, she called out to them in Roumanian, “I am going home to Bucharest with eight horses.”
On the return of the Princess to Roumania, they once more took up their abode in the romantic old monastery of Sinaia. Typhus and scarlet fever were raging in Bucharest. The Princess writes full of anxiety—“Bucharest is in such an unhealthy state that I shall return to it with fear and trembling. Typhus fever and angina reign there supreme. Diphtheria has carried off many of the children. They die in a few hours. I often become as unsettled and melancholy as a dark day in the autumn. Then an interesting person or piece of news comes in, and one brightens up like the dew in the sunshine.”
“22nd November.—It is four years to-day since I arrived in Turnu Severin. Now I see the world here in a different light. The tranquillity which habit brings has come over me, instead of all my fear and trembling. And I feel safer here, and more in my right place, than anywhere else in the world.”
To her Brother.
“Bucharest, 1873.
“People now often come to me to discuss their own affairs and seek for advice, comfort, and help. This makes me very happy, and as I wrote to some one lately: I am beginning to grow to my ideal, which is to become the confidential adviser of the Roumanian State, house, and family. This is a very grateful office, and only in this manner can I become really happy in my intercourse with so many people.
“Yes, my life here is very rich and full. I could not have imagined or wished it otherwise! It had to be attained by great sacrifices, and my endeavour is to make it worthy of them.”
* * * * *
“24th November 1873.—Itty now begins to say such pretty little things. Seeing the bust of her father lately, she exclaimed—‘Oh, look how Jack Frost has fallen on papa.’ She has made great progress in Roumanian this autumn, and sings three Roumanian songs, also a German ditty. All the games of the Kindergarten go very well already.”
“24th March 1874.—Itty has not forgotten any part of her stay in ‘Segenhaus’—no place and no name; and likes to talk of it all. She is a little Will-o’-the-Wisp, in all corners at once, which is a great trial for Mentor, the favourite dog. She makes him nervous, and he struggles to free himself from her embraces. He is not demonstrative, and likes to be left in peace. It is too funny to see them!”